


love & war between these four walls

by floweryfran



Series: do me wrong, do me wrong, do me wrong [3]
Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: College AU, M/M, Spideytorch Week 2020, and johnny is the bad boy or lazy one, cher voice: as IF!, dunkin or die, fuck a mcd's coffee, i did not expect it to turn out this long, i had no input it's just the characters and their whims now, i was SO EXCITED about this one, johnny wrote this fic for me honestly, lots of nuggets, only a crazy person would say peter is the smart one, peter & the mets uwu, spideytorchweek, that's what really needs a trigger warning, tw: mcdonald's coffee, tw: mcdonalds, you can rip smart johnny out of my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:13:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25532671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweryfran/pseuds/floweryfran
Summary: It starts like the punchline of a really bad joke.A Mechanical Engineering major and a Chem student walk into a McDonald’s.Pretty decent set-up, right? Has all the makings of the kind of gut-splitter your druncle climbs onto the band’s stage and tells halfway through your sister’s wedding reception, effectively offending your great-grandparents so bad that they up and leave.In this case—and what an unfortunate case it is—the humor starts and ends in the set-up.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Johnny Storm
Series: do me wrong, do me wrong, do me wrong [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848790
Comments: 39
Kudos: 204
Collections: SpideyTorch Week 2020





	love & war between these four walls

**Author's Note:**

> i threw in a little amazing spider-man and the human torch #3 reference because it makes me absolutely balls to the wall feral so just know i’m not taking credit for that
> 
> also the mechanics of street fighting is an MIT class that i thought would be Very Funny for them to offer at ESU
> 
> spideytorch week prompt numero 4: high school/college au! welcome to esu >:-)

It starts like the punchline of a really bad joke. 

A Mechanical Engineering major and a Chem student walk into a McDonald’s. 

Pretty decent set-up, right? Has all the makings of the kind of gut-splitter your druncle climbs onto the band’s stage and tells halfway through your sister’s wedding reception, effectively offending your great-grandparents so bad that they up and leave. 

In this case—and what an unfortunate case it is—the humor starts and ends in the set-up. 

Johnny Storm, pockets heavy with screws he’d forgotten to return during his last lab period, previously had no intention to speak to Peter Parker, notorious know-it-all with a perpetual beanie mashed low over his forehead to hide most of a mottled bruise. Johnny never wanted to sit down with the guy. He never even wanted to get close enough to brush elbows. To smell his cereal breath. To see the color of his shoelaces. 

Why would he? Parker is standoffish, and prideful, and he’s always reeling in these awesome supermodel-esque girlfriends. Johnny doesn’t trust a guy who can get amazing girl after amazing girl with seemingly no effort. There’s just got to be something weird or perverted going on there. 

So Johnny has no sympathy and no expectations for anything to come of this arrangement. He just hopes he doesn’t end up in prison for third-degree homicide if Parker’s as annoying alone as he is in class. 

“You’re late,” Johnny says when Peter arrives. He’s shoved himself into a booth in the back of what can only loosely be called a restaurant, cozily close to the bench with the leering Ronald McDonald statue on it. 

“Fuck you,” Peter greets, tossing his backpack so it slides across the length of the seat before him. He sits heavily, then pulls his sweatshirt strings tighter, looping them around his pointer fingers. His knee jumps under the table. Fidgety ass. 

“I literally want to punch you in the face,” Johnny says, “but someone seems to have beat me to it.” 

“Got mugged,” Peter mutters. “I was bringing takeout to—a, uh, family member, when some guy in leopard-print tights shook me down. What kind of soulless bastard takes someone’s egg rolls but leaves the duck sauce, roll-less, for me to stare at and question the existence of God and the morality of retribution? Well. The same type that wears leopard-print tights, I guess.”

“Please stop oversharing before I puke all over this table and then tip the whole thing towards you so that I might pour my vomit into your lap.”

“Really nice,” Peter says with a sarcastic smile. 

“That’s me. Down to my bones, I’m the nicest guy you’ll ever—”

“Can we just start this stupid project?” Peter interrupts, sitting up straighter. “I don’t want to be here any more than you do. So let’s just—do it. Finish it.”

“What are you doing taking Principles of Street Fighting Mechanics, anyway?” Johnny asks idly, digging through his backpack for his notebook. 

Peter makes a weird choked noise. “I—was curious. Very curious, mechanics of a punch. Scintillating info, could be useful, you know.”

“Seems like something that would be relevant to your life right now, ironically enough.” Johnny gestures towards the splotch of purple swallowing half of Peter’s forehead, sitting on the top rim of his glasses like sunset atop the horizon. “Although I gotta tell you that The Mechanics of Ducking and Running, which might be an even better fit for you, meets across the hall at four on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“Well, why are you enrolled, then?” Peter asks mulishly, sinking into his seat. 

“I’m curious, too. I’m a—I’m a dude, a manly man. I can be curious about, y’know, fisty things.”

“Fisty things,” Peter repeats. 

“You know what? I’m gonna go get some nuggets,” Johnny says, irrationally irritated. “You can wait until I’m back here to go get yours so I don’t need to stand near you for an extended period of time.”

“I’m not getting anything anyway,” Peter snipes. 

“Good.”

“Great.”

“Super great.”

“Super _super_ great.”

Johnny presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and valiantly holds in a scream. Screw this stupid class, screw this asinine partner project, and especially screw his terrible project partner. Screw McDonald’s and screw every moment in this greasy hellhole. 

Johnny thinks he’d rather choke on his nuggets than have to sit here and listen to Peter Parker extrapolate upon the trajectory of a fist when approaching a cheek from a thirty-degree angle every Tuesday for the next four months. 

——

“In what world is it okay for you to not order your own food and then proceed to eat three-quarters of my fries anyway?” Johnny asks shrewdly around the two chicken nuggets in his mouth. 

Peter shrugs a shoulder. “I’m an enterpriser. I know what I want and I know how to get it.”

“You’re a thief, is what you are,” Johnny says. There’s a dude in cat ears and a wolf tail sitting alone at a table while licking the back of his hand and Johnny can’t figure out if he should hide or not. _Candy Shop_ by 50 Cent is playing over the shop loudspeakers and it really completes the ambiance. “You’re a thief, and you’re evil down to the very core of you. I’m sure of this. It’s literally all you’ve communicated to me since the moment we met: evilness. Bad vibes.”

Peter gives him a little salute with a bouquet of Johnny’s limp fries held between his pointer and middle fingers like a cigarette. He shoves them into his mouth, then asks, “Hey, did you come up with an idea for the project format?”

Johnny startles a little and looks down at his notes. “Uh, yeah. Yeah. Let’s do a comic book.”

Peter swallows enormously, and then burps. 

Johnny holds up six fingers. He’s heard Peter do better. 

“How would a comic book be easier for us than a poster?” Peter asks. He takes a loud sip of Johnny’s Fanta. “I thought the plan we agreed on was as little work as humanly possible. Isn’t that the goal? Just, generally, in life, the goal? Killing eight birds with one well-aimed stone so we have time to do other stuff after?” 

“I’m sorry, do you want to fail?” Johnny says. He leans forward in his seat. “Because if you want to fail, then we’ll do your poster, and we’ll print out all our info in twelve-point Arial and glue it on, and it’ll look all mushy and gross and the ink will bleed everywhere and we’ll get failing grades in a _stupid_ _elective,_ but we would’ve finished it fast. Is that what you want? To end up retaking a stupid elective with me next semester?”

“Jesus, Blondie,” Peter says, eyes narrowed, “you’re not used to push-back against your ideas, are you?”

“My ideas are excellent,” Johnny snaps. “I’m extremely intelligent and capable and I _am_ right.”

“Is now really the best time for your daily affirmations? I know self-love is supposed to be important and all, but we’re kinda in the middle of something right now.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Johnny says, face hot. “You’re a prick, did you know that? A wimpy, syphilis micro-prick. With crabs.”

Peter nods in appreciation. “Please, tell me more about myself.”

Johnny leans closer yet and says, “You’re a loser. You’re smart enough to be a Chem major but too lazy to come to class and do your work. You think you’ll sail through on attitude and charm, but I’m not swayed by you. I know a dozen guys just like you, Peter Parker, and I’m gonna meet a dozen more. So you’re going to plant your ass on that bench, listen to my ideas, and help me to make a fucking comic book demonstrating the proper form and technique needed to punch a guy out using geometric angles and applied force, because I’m a one of a kind type of person with one of a kind types of ideas and I refuse to be dragged down by a freeloading, prideful dickbag like you!”

A moment. 

Peter leans back. “Okay,” he says. 

“Okay?” Johnny repeats, blushing furiously as his anger abates. 

“Okay.” Peter nods a little. “Fine. I hear you. Comic book, sure, let’s do it.” He clears his throat a little. “Do you have any other big ideas you were planning to hold onto until another wave of rage hit?”

Johnny scrabbles across the tabletop to grab his pencil. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve got ideas.”

——

“Must you tap your foot constantly?” Johnny says. “No, that was not rhetorical, take out your earbuds. Answer me. Do you need to be taken for a walk so you can go piss in a shrub? Why are you so bouncy? Tigger-ass-boy.”

“I drank three cans of Red Bull for breakfast and my heart is still palpitating.”

“Oh, so he’s the _idiot_ type of genius. Just my luck, collecting all the stupid smart people. God. All those IQ points and yet I bet you don’t even put them towards compiling a proper skincare regimen—which is truly the most basic of human needs. So many intelligence; so few smarts.”

“I’m no genius.”

Johnny scoffs. “And through that stunning show of narcissistically selective hearing, you’ve just managed to confirm every qualm I’ve ever had with you. Return to completing our differential equations, No Genius.”

——

“You are literally the worst artist I’ve ever seen,” Johnny notes, pointing at a lopsided tree Peter has just drawn for a panel background. 

Peter stares at Johnny, then says, “Please, oh great muse of the arts, do show me how it’s done.”

Johnny glowers, then takes the pencil from Peter’s hand. He perches the dull lead over the paper, strangely nervous. Doodling in the margins of his notes is one thing, but Peter’s eyes are locked on him now and that’s just different, down to the bones of it. 

Johnny lightly sketches out the triangle of an evergreen, then starts hatching out the branches and needles, jabbed angles, shading. He erases out stripes for highlighted definition. 

When he’s satisfied, he shoves it across the table at Peter. 

Peter picks it up and squints at it. Pulls it right up to his nose, then holds it at arm's length. “I thought you said you were an Engineering major,” he says gruffly. 

“I am,” Johnny says, preening, because that was practically a compliment. “I’m multi-talented. I’m very capable of an incredible number of things. You thought you had me pinned, but you don’t.”

Peter, begrudgingly, smiles. “I don’t.”

Johnny nods once, firmly. He takes a pointed bite of his burger and doesn’t bother admitting that the only reasons he feels somewhat capable around art supplies are because he has so much experience with makeup application and because he tends to vent at Alicia while she’s in her studio doing artist-y things. Peter doesn’t need to know that. “Gimme the paper, asshole,” he says. 

Peter does. They both stare at it for a moment, then Peter says, “I’ll start researching stuff from the list of topics, maybe putting a plot together.”

Johnny glances up at him. “Okay,” he says. 

——

There’s an entire theater troupe in the McDonald’s. 

It’s a theater troupe of theater kids. Theater kids who do theater. 

This is a _nightmare._

“That Donna clearly deserves better. Look at her. Look at the way she’s sitting. That posture. That grace. She’s meant for more than this. I would trust her with my life.” 

Peter snorts. “I am wary to trust any theater kid, ever. I mean, my best friend MJ was a theater kid, but she’s also the type of theater kid who’s gonna be on Broadway in a few months, so that’s—y’know, acceptable. Valid.”

“Good for her,” Johnny says. “See, that’s badass. That’s the badass type of theater kid. The ones over there are—what are they doing?”

“Oh god. Oh fuck.”

“They’re—are they standing up? In time?”

_“You can dance! You can ji-hive!”_

“Oh _no.”_

“Why does Jesus hate us? I’m gonna cry. Oh my lord.”

_“See that girl! Watch that scene! Dig in the dancing queen!”_

The harmonies are atrocious. Johnny cannot believe these kids were allowed to _do that_ in front of actual and corporeal people. On a stage. They’re desecrating the holy atmosphere of mid-afternoon McDonald’s. 

Peter buries his face in his hands. “I can’t handle this, emotionally. If I grab a plastic fork and start stabbing, know it isn’t me. It’s the dormant chaotic spirit inhabiting my brain. _They_ pulled it out of me. I have it pretty well smothered, usually, but this is an extreme situation. My psychotic break is nigh. You’ll have to stop me.”

“Why would I stop you? I’d join you. Murder is sometimes, at certain moments, acceptable, and this is undoubtedly one of those moments.”

Peter’s back shakes like he’s laughing, but it’s more likely that he’s sobbing. Johnny thinks he might join him. 

Johnny peeks over his shoulder. God, they’re so bad. “Donna looks like she’s commiserating with us. Poor thing. She is absolutely mortified. As she should be. What a good soul she must possess. How does she handle this? Being in that group of kids for extended periods of time? Peter. Peter, they’re walking in circles around the tables. Oh, wait, it’s _choreo._ Wow, it’s hilariously bad. Peter, open your eyes. Peter, look at this. I think we need to experience this together. I think this is the summoning of a demon. I think our spirits will ascend if we watch this. I think we’ll reach enlightenment. Oh, my chest feels _weird.”_

“Stop watching,” Peter hisses. “It’s what they want. Don’t give them what they want.”

“No, I—I can’t look away.”

Peter reaches across the table and tugs Johnny’s wrist. “Stop. Snap out of it. They’ll possess you. They’ll steal your consciousness and propagate your body with their alien brains. That would be a big problem. They don’t know the mechanics of a punch. If they possess you, I’ll have to teach a theater kid the mechanics of a punch so they can finish this project in your stead, and I don’t want to do that. Please don’t make me do that.”

Johnny looks back at Peter and smirks. “Aw, Petey. For you? Light of my life, flame of my fireplace, butter of my cookies—oof.”

Peter had shoved Johnny’s face away, eyes rolling. “Alright, idiot. Keep sketching. Maybe this is all a shared grease-based hallucination and they’ll go away if we stop thinking about them.” 

——

“What’s the real reason you don’t eat when we work on the project?” Johnny asks on a Tuesday in late September when the city is crisp and stinky. Johnny is vaguely sunburnt from a long weekend on the Jersey Shore with Sue, now hiding under the brim of a denim baseball cap and feeling grumpy as could be. He hates looking less than his best. Especially when his best feels like a mask over his real face more days than not. 

Peter shoots a glance up from the stick figure he’s drawing, then looks back down. “I’m poor.”

Johnny thinks about this for a second. “I’m going to go get you a burger. You eat cheese? You look like a cheese guy.”

“I don’t need your charity,” Peter says. It’s full of conviction, but utterly tired—like the type of thing he’s said a hundred times and believes the same way he believes the earth is round and revolves around the sun. 

“It’s not charity, dude. I have no sympathy for you, ever, no matter what. It’s just that you look like you’re made of silly string and wet paper. You look one hungry night away from actual medically-diagnosed malnourishment, and being seen with you while you look like _this_ simply can _not_ be reflecting well on me. Ugh. You look unfortunate at best, and possibly homeless at slightly less than best.”

“Thanks,” Peter says. “That explains my lack of success on the college dating scene.”

Johnny flicks up a brow. “Of all the terrible things I’d say to you, I’d never think to shit on your game. You’ve got that ‘anemic white guy with a skateboard and an attitude problem’ thing going on. Chicks dig that.”

Peter huffs. “I balance that out by doing plenty of things chicks don’t dig.”

“Such as?”

“I have the long-term memory of swiss cheese. Every important date in history has been forgotten by me at one point or another. I take way too many weeks to do my laundry. My fridge always contains exactly one tub of expired sour cream, a jar of pickle spears, and a single egg. I talk too loud during sex. I’m also late to everything. Literally. I was two weeks late to my own birth.” Peter erases something. “Chicks don’t dig any of _that.”_

Johnny stares at Peter a little more. “I’m gonna go get a McFlurry.”

And when Johnny returns to their hidden booth in the back corner—well, if the cashier got his _order wrong_ and now he’s got _way too much food,_ Peter’s just going to have to help him eat it all. It would be inhumane of him not to. And stupid. And rude. And wasteful. 

Johnny hides a smirk behind his spoon. 

“Don’t look so smug,” Peter grumbles as he peels the cheese goop off his patty. He pops a limp pickle chip in his mouth and meets Johnny’s eyes. “And, for the record, if my aunt ever asks? I try to keep kosher.”

Johnny looks up. Peter meets his eyes. 

They both return to their food. 

Johnny finds a drawing of a stick figure man with his head on fire shoved into his backpack once he’s back in his apartment. He crumples it into a ball, pauses, hates himself, flattens it out, and tapes it onto his wall. 

——

“Okay—ow! Okay! Stop, stop, _Peter.”_

“I will not stop until you admit it!” Peter hollers. He kicks Johnny hard on the knee under the table. “Say it. The Mets have more heart than the Goddamn Yankees any day of the week. Mets fans could literally bury Goddamn Yankees fans with the pure _emotion_ we feel in support of our team. No—it’s more than a team. It’s a family, all of us together. The team, and the fans, and Mister Met. The foam fingers aren’t just paraphernalia, they’re family heirlooms, Johnny. Johnny, they are _heirlooms._ Listen to me, Johnny, stop laughing. Stop laughing right now. I’m serious. I’m serious!” Peter climbs onto the tabletop. He _stands_ on the _table,_ ancient Nike skate shoes precariously close to Johnny’s cardboard tube of presumably-apple pie, and he says, “The Mets are a home. The Mets, like New York, stink. Some days I think about the Mets and I want to sock every individual player in the gut and then disembowel myself with a plastic spork.” Johnny cannot stop staring at him. Johnny has never seen him passionate about anything before, ever. His voice goes all round and fast, the words blurring together and that native Queens accent running diphthongs rampant through every syllable. “But other days, I want to kiss every one of them on the forehead and thank them for their service. If the American army were more like the Mets—”

“America woulda’ got its ass handed to it years ago,” someone shouts from behind the counter. 

“Who asked you?” Peter demands. “Lemme soliloquize, a’right? If the American army were more like the Mets, there would be no war. There would only be love, and unflinching support for the American people as a collective, _from_ the American people as a collective. We’d have world fuckin’ peace, if the army were more like the Mets.”

Johnny squints up at Peter through one eye. “Are you done?”

“Yeah, I’m done,” Peter mumbles, and he clambers back down into his seat. His ears are bright red. He rubs his nose on the back of his hand. 

Johnny gives him a little applause. “A very moving speech.”

“Any Mets fan woulda’ done that. Would you have done that for the Goddamn Yankees?”

Johnny considers. “No.”

Peter throws his hands up. “Point? Made.” He squints at Johnny. “Now eat ya’ damn nuggets before they go cold.”

——

Peter is smiling today. Johnny doesn’t know why, but Peter is smiling today, and so Johnny is smiling today. He doesn’t know when the appearance of his smile started being affected by that of Peter’s, but the thought of it gives him acid reflux. 

Peter is smug today, too. Smirking, snorting, poking at Johnny’s drawings. Chatting up a storm. Talking about his roommate—who is apparently some quasi-royal heir to an enormous corporate conglomerate—and his biochemistry lab blowing up two days ago, and his aunt’s zany cooking shenanigans. 

This is about when Johnny realizes that, though they’ve been meeting-up weekly for over a month and have even bounced some GamePigeon Eight Ball back and forth in really dire moments of boredom, he knows absolutely nothing about Peter’s life. 

As Johnny sketches a small lake into the scenery, Peter taps his fingernails on the countertop and says, “The pot literally exploded. Like, this metal pot, this Mario Batali saucepan, it exploded all over the kitchen. Shards of hot metal flew all over the place. There’s a chunk carved out of the floorboards from this piece that got stuck. It was like a frickin’ _ninja star.”_

Johnny snorts, looking up from the sheen he’s erasing into the lake’s surface. 

Peter’s got his eyes all big and earnest. Sometimes, when Peter talks, he glazes over, almost as if he’s speaking without thinking at all. But today he’s here. He’s almost vibrant. 

For some stupid reason, it makes Johnny’s chest ache. 

“So your aunt was around a lot?” Johnny asks. 

It’s clear that was the wrong thing to say. 

Peter’s face cracks right down the middle. “She raised me,” he says. “She was—for a really long time, she was it. She’s my person, you know? She’s my mom.”

“Oh,” Johnny says. “Your parents…?”

“Dead,” Peter says. “I was four. My uncle went the same way when I was fifteen.”

Johnny is quiet for a second. “My parents are both gone, too. My big sister Sue raised me, for the most part. So, uh. Yeah.”

Peter looks at Johnny. Behind his glasses, his eyes are hazel. Johnny has never noticed. He sees now. 

Peter says, “It’s not a competition, Jonathan.”

Johnny laughs out loud, his head falling back. 

“I’m serious,” Peter says. “I didn’t bleed my heart to you so you could say you had it just as bad, you _ass.”_

_“I’m_ the ass?!” Johnny cackles, a hand smacking down on the tabletop hard enough to bounce their food. 

The restaurant jolts into quiet at the sound. 

Johnny looks around, then meets Peter’s eyes. Peter’s mouth has popped open in a little _o,_ and the both of them gape, cowed. 

They burst into laughter. 

They share food, and sometimes words, and sometimes napkins if things are especially dire. But this laughter is by far Johnny’s favorite thing they’ve shared yet. 

——

“Have you—stop, give me the pencil, Peter. Have you ever seen a human? Ever? Do you know vaguely what they look like? Because this sorta makes me think you don’t know, at all.”

“We can’t all be Picassos in the making, Johnny.”

“I’m not a Picasso. I’ve literally never tried to make Surrealist art in my whole life. I’m more like a dog who watched their human poop a lot and then taught themselves how to sit on the toilet so the two of them could emotionally bond about their shared interest in seated poops.”

“That’s just—way too specific to leave me at ease. Did you have a toilet-pooping dog? Please tell me you did, oh god. I might have to eat this napkin dispenser if you didn’t, just to distract myself from the emotional pain of my full-bodied disappointment.”

“No. I probably saw it in one of those heartwarming, seven-minute Facebook videos that starts auto-playing while you scroll and you don’t have the heart to skip.”

“Dude. I always skip. I’ve got a rock where my heart should be. I cannot feel emotions.”

Johnny reaches over and steals one of Peter’s nuggets. 

Peter looks up, bambi eyes in full force. 

“See? You can feel emotions. That right there is _betrayal._ Oh god. I don’t want this to become an emotional intelligence course. Please don’t make me feel things with you.” 

“Let’s never let this happen again. I hate it a lot.”

“Glad we’re in agreement. Ugh.”

“A feelings-free zone.”

“Thank _god_ for that.”

——

“Come to a party with me,” Johnny says to Peter as he walks over to the booth, skateboard tucked under his armpit, glasses slipping down his nose. 

“Exsqueeze me?” Peter says. 

“A party,” he says. “Come to. With me.”

Peter smiles for a moment, then it falls. “Shit,” he says. “I have a date tonight.”

Johnny’s chest, despicably, crumples like a can of Sprite under a boot. “Oh,” he says. “Okay.” He shakes his head. “No, that’s—that’s cool. That’s awesome. Tell me about her.”

Peter lights up. 

He sits down, talks about a black headband in blond hair and a snappish counterpart to his lab experiments and the sound of white heeled boots on linoleum. He says she seems to shine—silver and moonlike. That he’s been infatuated with her since moment one, all the way back in August, but that it took her until now to agree to go out with him. 

“She sounds great,” Johnny says. 

“She is,” Peter agrees. 

A moment. 

Peter’s gaze flirts down and he clears his throat. “Enough about me. Let’s—start, let’s get to work.”

——

“I wish this was one of those McDonald's locations with the playpen in the back. You know the one? The kind everyone got pinkeye after breathing in the direction of?” 

Johnny sighs. “I cannot fathom the levels of utter moronicism I would have to deal with if we had a playpen here.”

——

Johnny wedges a chicken nugget into his cheek. And another. 

“Cute,” Peter comments. 

“Dats mbe,” Johnny agrees. “I’mb fookin’ adora’le.” 

“You look angry today,” Peter says. He’s watching Johnny chew with too much interest. “Why are you angry?”

“‘M not.”

“You’ve got these angry eyebrows going on. Your eyebrows are never this angry. Sarcastic, yes. Judgmental? Absolutely. But not angry. This is a whole new, never-before-seen special edition for your eyebrows. Disney would slap a copyright sticker on you, if they could see you right now. Release you in technicolor.”

Johnny glares. He swallows his nuggets. If Peter wants angry, Johnny can show him angry. “Do you ever stop pushing? Not everything is your business.”

Peter’s brows leap up on his forehead. “It’s my business if it affects the project.”

“It won’t,” Johnny says sharply. “It won’t.”

“How do you know? When you’re pissed, it’s full-body. It’s everywhere in you. It’s not just anger; it’s like you’re burning up.”

Johnny presses the heel of a hand into his forehead. 

“You can talk to me, or whatever,” Peter says, voice strangely soft. “Or I could punch someone, no questions asked. I know how, now. I know way too much about punch mechanics. You point, I swing my fist. It’s very bony. I could probably poke someone’s eyeball out using my knuckle like an oddly-shaped toothpick.” 

Peter isn’t ever soft. He’s all hardened muscle and new leather and ice chips. 

This is just offensive. 

“You have no right,” Johnny says, voice cracking. “We’re not friends. You don’t get to ask about me.”

Peter’s face goes rock hard. 

There. That’s right. 

“I’m just trying to be a good guy,” Peter says. “I’m trying to prove you wrong. I’m _not_ just an asshole, or a freeloading, prideful dickbag, or whatever shining praise you want to bestow unto me this week. But I guess I _literally_ can’t show you otherwise. Not when that's all you’ll think of me, no matter what I do.” 

He slides out of the booth, jaw clenched tight, bag over his shoulder. 

“Wait,” Johnny blurts. “Wait, okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. That was my bad. I’m just—whatever. I’m tired. I haven’t been sleeping.”

Peter looks at him. 

“Sit down,” Johnny says, gesturing with his head to the abandoned chicken tenders on the tray. 

Peter looks at him a little longer. Something changes on his face. He sits. “Why haven’t you been sleeping?” he asks. 

“Jesus,” Johnny groans, covering his face with his palms. “Was I yelling at a wall?”

“Maybe. Why haven’t you been sleeping?”

Johnny spreads his fingers enough to look at Peter through the cracks. “Talking about it won’t help me.”

“What about yelling some more?”

“No.”

“Hm. Okay. How _do_ I help, then?”

Johnny drops his hands. The molecules of his marrow are exhausted. “Let’s just get some panels sketched out, okay?” he says. 

Peter stares at him a moment longer, all brutally intelligent eyes and set jaw. “Okay,” he says. He starts to dig in his backpack. “Okay.”

——

Johnny plops a pair of Happy Meal cartons on the tabletop. 

Peter looks up at him and his eyes go enormous. “Dude,” he says, literally choked up. 

Johnny grins widely. “I thought you’d enjoy. I got you fries instead of apple slices. You put off a fry sort of vibe.” 

“Did you get me choccy milk?”

“You know it.”

“You’re the coolest mom _ever,”_ Peter says, wrenching the box open. “Oh my god. Toys. Johnny, toys. There are toys in these.”

“Have you never had a Happy Meal?” Johnny asks, half-kidding, daintily plopping nuggets and apple slices onto the napkin tablecloth he set up on his tray. 

But then Peter says, “No!” and Johnny’s heart weirdly rents. 

“Oh,” Johnny says. Then he wags his brows. “Wow, Pete. I can’t believe you just let me pop your cherry. In public, no less.” 

“Try not to be so sincere for once. It’s not a good look.” Peter rips into his plastic toy bag with his teeth. “Oh my god. Johnny.”

In Peter’s palm sits a tiny purple Furby. 

“Let’s burn it,” Johnny says immediately. 

Peter looks up, scrunched-browed and open-mouthed at the suggestion. “You’re satanic. I’m going to keep him and raise him as my own. I was gonna offer co-parenting opportunities but I clearly cannot trust you to be within eight miles of my child.”

Johnny stares, then snorts a little, shaking his head. 

“What?” Peter demands. “What is so unfathomable to you about—my dear, sweet purple baby and I?” He’s cradling it in his hands, swaying it like he’s putting it to sleep. “Is this so abnormal? So strange for your brain?”

“Yes.” Johnny shakes his head again, then laughs helplessly. “Yeah.”

——

It’s the first week of November when Peter doesn’t show up for the first time. 

Peter is late every single week without fail. Whether it’s five minutes or two hours, Johnny waits in this crappy McDonald’s with his laptop open and reruns of Parks and Rec queued up. Every time, he waits until Peter arrives to get his own food. It’s just polite. Peter could use some lessons in being polite. 

Anyway, Johnny doesn’t mind waiting. 

But it’s November, and there’s a sooty, early snow coating the city like some sort of sound-blocking blanket, and Johnny is wearing three sweaters at once, and Peter isn’t here. He’s had to move onto reruns of The Office because he’s finished P&R for probably the twelfth time. The Office is inferior. Johnny is not chuffed about any of this. 

He shoots Peter another text. Another. He imagines Peter’s phone is buzzing like a bee on speed and he really suddenly hopes with a surprisingly large amount of him that Peter is okay. 

Because he doesn’t know what he’d say if it turned out otherwise. 

——

Peter shows up the next week. 

It’s been complete radio silence—not a text or a call since the missed meeting. No social media activity. 

Johnny had been preparing to yell at him. To say _You owe me an explanation. You should have warned me. I waited for hours._ Or worse: _I missed you._

Peter stops at the side of the booth at four on the dot, which worries Johnny more than anything: he’s on time. Peter tosses his backpack along the length of the bench, and then sits. 

He’s wrapped in a scarf, tucked into a hat, and closed in a jacket to his chin. The few inches of skin that show are so pale that they’re greenish. His lips are blue beneath a layer of chapstick so thick that Johnny can practically see his reflection in it. Behind his glasses, Peter’s eyes are entirely empty: drained of color, red-rimmed and swollen, and tinny—dirty pennies where he’d always been wet dirt and damp moss. 

“Hey,” Johnny says. All of the accusations he’d had perched and prepared on the tip of his tongue dissipate. “What’s—hey. Peter.”

Peter meets Johnny’s eyes for a flicker of a moment, then pulls his backpack into his lap and starts digging through it. 

“Peter,” Johnny says. 

Peter keeps digging. 

“Peter. Look at me.”

He pauses. 

“Please look at me,” Johnny says. “Please.”

Peter does. 

“Take off that scarf,” Johnny says gently. “You look fucking stupid.”

Peter does. His every move is stunted; half-aborted. He’s eggshells held before a lightbulb and a floor of thin glass beneath steel-toed boots and Johnny is suddenly, blazingly _angry_ at whoever had the nerve to do this to Peter. 

“Alright,” Johnny says. “I need you to say a word, some word, some actual, out loud something right now before I freak out. I’m very close to freaking out. I bet you can tell. It’s a precipice, and I could easily fall off. And die. It’s a very high up precipice, you see, and if I fall—”

Peter buries his face in his hands. He starts to tremble. 

“What can I do?” Johnny asks. “Tell me what you need.”

“Just sit here,” Peter says. His voice is terrible, so gruff that it makes Johnny’s throat ache with phantom pains. 

“I can do that,” Johnny says. 

So he sits. And their project goes untouched. And after twenty minutes of utter silence, Peter says, “She’s dead. Gwen.” 

Johnny’s stomach sinks into his ass. He imagines, for the second time, Peter’s phone incessantly buzzing with fucking demands for his location and memes from Johnny, and he feels like a grimy rodent. “Oh, _Peter.”_

“Don’t—if you fucking apologize I’ll kill you right here and now.”

“I’m so glad we’re back to the death threats part of our acquaintance.” 

Peter looks at him and, for a moment, he almost seems to have color in his eyes. 

Encouraged, Johnny says, “Seriously. You’re so much more fun when you’re threatening to maim me in new and interesting ways.” 

Sue would tell him mentioning bodily harm and homicide to the recently bereaved is unsympathetic. But Peter is staring at Johnny like there’s only the two of them and this mountain of pain to scale, and if Peter’s so masochistic that jabs at his character are what make him smile again, so be it. Johnny will make a rope out of them, a braid in colored strings, to pull Peter along by. Johnny will be the weight that buoys Peter over the crest. 

Johnny doesn’t know when Peter Parker became his friend, but the ache in his stomach at seeing him like this tells him it’s been a while. It tells him more than he can bear to hear. 

So he gets a tray laden edge-to-edge with cartons of chicken nuggets and smacks it down between them. And he doesn’t let Peter leave until he eats enough that Johnny doesn’t worry he’ll faint of malnutrition and smack his head on a countertop and die of brain trauma or whatever they call it on Grey’s. 

Johnny watches Peter leave, dragging his feet as he goes. 

He can’t have been gone longer than two minutes when Johnny shoots off a text that simply says, _movie night tomorrow._

Peter replies, _not up 4 it._

Johnny, chewing his lip, says, _then come be sad on my couch with no movie playing. whatever. i thought misery loved company. tag yourself: i’ll be company._

_fine,_ Peter replies. _but if the snacks suck, i’m leaving._

——

Johnny has a bit of a stubborn streak. 

Sue and Reed and Ben know it. He knows it. Peter knows it, too. 

But he has impressed even himself with his ability to force Peter into meeting him for shitty milkshakes and grease patties every Tuesday for three months so far. Save for that one unmentionably tragic Tuesday, of course—which Johnny doesn’t count. It’s not a calendrical occasion, because, if it were, Johnny would have to give Peter time to be sad on Tuesdays. Johnny decidedly does _not_ give Peter time to be sad on Tuesdays. He can mourn however the hell he wants every other day of the dingdong week, but Tuesdays are run Johnny’s way, and Johnny thinks Peter needs a distraction to shake him out of his stupor. 

Not that the stupor isn’t warranted. 

It’s just that Johnny thinks Peter deserves a life. Johnny never met Gwen, but he thinks she’d agree. She cared for Peter. It’s impossible, Johnny has discovered, to care for Peter and not want more for him. 

So Johnny decides to bring Peter to Central Park. Everything is all frosted and magical like God’s elbow knocked over a bowl of powdered sugar while he was doing his nondenominational holiday baking. 

Peter, it turns out, is a photographer. So even though they get cold enough for their balls to retreat safely back into the warmth of their bodies, it’s worth it to see a whisper of wonder in Peter’s eyes again. 

Nose pink and glasses fogged up, Peter asks Johnny, “Wanna go grab a coffee?”

Johnny suggests, “McDonald’s?”

——

“Alright—alright, truth,” Johnny says, and maybe the coffee in his cardboard cup is mixed with a few shots of Baileys, and maybe he’s happy right down to the pit of his stomach, and maybe that’s okay. 

“Truth,” Peter echoes. “Shit. Now I gotta think of one for ya’.”

“You would’ve had to think of a dare, too, if I chose that instead.” 

“Nah, I had a dare in mind.”

“What were you gonna make me do? What were you—”

“I was gonna—”

“—gonna make me do, Peter?”

“—make you eat your cup.”

_“Eat_ my _cup.”_

“I thought it was creative. You look peaky, you could use a snack.”

“I could _not_ use a snack. God, you’re too sober. Here, stick this up your sleeve and then sneakily pour it in your—sneakily! Peter! Sneakily, do you know what that means? It means with sneak. None pour, left sneak.”

“Oh my god.”

“I changed my mind. I think we need food. Carbs. Oatmeal.”

“McDonald’s oatmeal?”

“You heard me. Fruit and maple? Fruit or maple? Both? Neither? Old man?”

“Fruit _and_ oatmeal. Maple. Fruit and maple. On my oatmeal. Oh god.”

_“There_ it is.”

When Johnny sits back down with the oats, the room is pleasantly spinning. Peter is smiling a little to himself, and that’s a fucking miracle of its own. Not wanting to disturb that smile even a degree, Johnny nudges the cup of oats towards Peter with a knuckle and then prods the handle of a spoon into his loose fist where it lies on the tabletop. 

Peter looks up. “Thanks,” he says. “Hey, thanks, Jay. I really appreciate—the oatmeal.”

“The oatmeal.”

“You heard me.”

Johnny stares at him. “Don’t be fucking gross,” he says. “Eat your oats before they… grow legs and start to riot.”

Peter grins. He reaches across the table and pats the back of Johnny’s hand with his own. 

They eat their oatmeal. 

——

Johnny likes watching Peter walk into the McDonald’s from their spot in the booth. 

It’s not creepy. It’s just Peter. It’s people-watching, but small-scale. Peter-watching. 

Whatever. It’s not fucking weird. 

Most days, Peter walks in and the bell at the door jingles. His nose is practically buried in the screen of his phone and his hair dangles into his eyes. He’ll raise a hand without looking up and wave to Johnny without looking up. He’ll sit without looking up and shove his bag into the dusty booth corner without looking up. He’ll keep staring at his screen until Johnny kicks his shin, calls him rude, and snatches the phone right out of his grip. 

Some days, Peter’s shoulders are hunched and his hands are buried in his pockets and his hood is up. On these days, Johnny gets up to order their food before Peter sits down. He’ll need a minute to himself. Johnny can give him that. 

Sometimes Peter breaks into the McDonald’s at a run, a story perched on the very bow of his lips, and these days are always Johnny’s favorites. They’re brighter, louder, packed with banter and unabashed laughter and very little actual work. 

On Johnny’s best Tuesday of all, historically, ever, Peter walks into McDonald’s smiling, meets Johnny’s gaze immediately, and grabs him by the hands before even stopping to pull off his backpack. He tugs Johnny to his feet, tosses his arms round Johnny’s shoulders, and says, with his nose pressed to Johnny’s temple, “Today’s a good day.”

When Johnny thinks about Peter’s warm chest and long legs and the bauble on his beanie, his chest starts line-dancing. He doesn’t know what to make of it. He just knows it feels good. 

——

Peter drinks a lot of sugary coffees. 

Johnny only learns this when the holiday season hits in earnest and everything has gingerbread man jizz and peppermint sweat in it. Peter will walk in, sucking at the dregs from his cup, then sit, bouncing his knee and staring into space like he’s crossed out of his mind. The sweet scent will cling to his lips and carry across the length of the table on his breath, and Johnny will sit there and pretend it isn’t driving him out of his mind. 

Peter’s swirling ice and watery coffee in his cup today, eyes locked on Johnny’s shoulder without seeing him: the hush of ice and water and no awareness. Johnny thinks this should be a criminal offense. 

He reaches across the table, pries Peter’s fingers off the cup, and takes a pull for himself. It’s disgusting. It’s some sort of vanilla, white chocolate sort of thing, and Johnny thinks there had been whipped cream at some point. It’s long melted now. 

“Oh, gross,” Johnny says. “Is this pure sugar syrup? Did you even get coffee in this? You’re not jacked up on caffeine, you’re on a sugar high.” 

Peter still stares into space. 

“Hey,” Johnny says, “fuckwad. Wake up.” He reaches across the table and goes to grab Peter’s hand. 

What he doesn’t expect is for Peter to take a breath that stutters a little, turn his hand over, and cling to Johnny’s wrist like it’s the only thing keeping him from floating to the ceiling like a sad birthday balloon. 

Johnny reaches his other hand over and sandwiches Peter’s hand between his. 

“Don’t let go,” Peter chokes. 

“I won’t,” Johnny assures. “Stop drinking sugary coffee.” _I can’t reach you when you do._

“I won’t,” Peter says. 

Johnny hums. “Good. Then everything is as the universe intends.” 

Peter makes a choked sound that might be a laugh. 

——

December is spent in a constant state of caffeine-induced stress. Papers are written on three bottles of Five-Hour Energy; lab practicals are completed with bellies full of espresso and cups of ramen; hats and gloves are lost and free cookies sit at the front of the dining hall and candles all find window panes to settle down in. It’s the holidays. Everything is finally coming to a head. 

The end of the semester means the end of the project for Peter and Johnny. 

And, the thing is, though neither of them has the nerve to address it, they’ve already been dragging this out longer than intended. If they’d buckled down and done the damn thing as quickly as they’d wanted to when they started, it would’ve been finished weeks ago. 

Johnny can’t speak for Peter, but for him? The fact of the matter was that he wasn’t ready to let Peter go. 

God. Whatever. He’s a simp. He’s simping so hard. 

So it’s December, Peter’s knuckles are all chapped to hell, Johnny has a hash brown melting on his tongue, and they’re using a Crayola 64-pack of crayons to finish their comic strips on How To Punch, Featuring Paul McSimon The Pigeon. 

Just another Tuesday, really. 

Peter pokes at a background, non-titular pigeon with the purple crayon Johnny has him using to shadow the brick walls. “The thought bubble here has Natural Force written in, but really Friction Force could be more accurate for this specific situation considering it can be argued the pigeon is moving, which exerts a kinetic and changing force rather than a fixed, unmoving one. He literally can’t be an entirely sedentary object in this equation. He breathes, causing minuscule movements. He fucks around, the way stupid little pigeons do. And those movements create—”

“Friction. Yeah.” Johnny grabs an eraser and sets to fixing the error. He sort of likes when Peter corrects him. Sometimes he’s snarky about it and sometimes—like now—it's almost absent-minded, but it’s always more about Peter than Johnny. Peter loves being right more than he cares about Johnny being wrong; he doesn’t mind Johnny being wrong, but he _really_ _loves_ being right. 

“Hey,” Peter says. “Johnny.”

As soon as Johnny finishes penciling in the correction, he looks up. 

“I think we should go out,” Peter says. 

Johnny blinks. “Um?”

Peter stares a moment longer, then rips his gaze away to look out the window. “We should go out. When the project is done. Like, on a date.”

Johnny thinks his brain is made of Silly Putty. “You—what?”

“Let’s date. You and me.”

“You can’t even—” Johnny chokes a little. “How is this a good idea if you can’t even look at me while you say it?”

Peter looks, then. He looks hard. He reaches across the tabletop to take the crayon out of Johnny’s hand and then loops their fingers together. “You think I’m bearable, right?”

“Uh, sure, yeah. Yes, of course.”

“And we have fun when we hang out?”

Johnny is acutely aware of how sweaty his hands are. “Yeah,” he tries. 

Peter’s face falls a little. “You don’t have fun? I think we have fun.”

“We do,” Johnny says quickly. “We do, I’m just—Peter, what are you doing?”

“I like you,” he says. “It took a lot of soul-searching to realize it, but you’re just—wow. Johnny. You’re, like, this enormously bright dude. You’re this warmth in my life, and I didn’t really understand how much it means to me until, like, last night, when I saw a picture of you on Instagram and my first coherent thought was to want to print it out and put it on my wall for posterity.”

Johnny cannot find a single word. He semi-fluently speaks three languages and yet his brain is empty. 

“I like you,” Peter repeats. “And—it’s the stupidest thing in the world, but when I’m around you, I can hear myself cracking wise again. And for the first time in a long time, since—Gwen, it doesn’t feel like I’m putting on an act, or going through the motions. I’m Peter again. When I’m with you, I’m Peter again. For the first time in practically _two months._ I feel like I’m alive. And I want to feel like that all the time.”

Johnny stares. So much for their feelings-free zone. 

Although Johnny supposes he’d broken that rule far before Peter ever had. 

“So. D’you wanna give it a shot, Hot Stuff?” Peter asks. 

Johnny feels a grin start to spread over his face. “Yeah,” he says. “If you’re ready? I’d like that a lot.”

**Author's Note:**

> i had sO much fun with this one jdskgjg it was one of my favorites to do so let me know if you vibed! how you're feeling! one semester really flies when you spend the whole thing blatantly confused as to whether that feeling in your tummy is loathing or L*ve
> 
> <333


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